On Mainstream Film Criticism

The formalist criticism of film is treated as the standard mode of “reading,” especially in terms of film reviews—the main points of concern are the images, the quality of acting, the music, and progress of the plot, and so on. There is no attempt to decipher these in terms of their meaning; rather, the point is to critique these mechanisms in terms of their effectiveness, ultimately with personal enjoyment as the criterion. This, in itself, should betray the sad emptiness of mainstream reviews, which lends itself merely as a consumerist tool, and even as the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith’s exposition of Capitalist economy in The Wealth of Nations, which, from the enjoyment of the critique, makes sure that demand rises for certain works, and thus increasing their supply, and the opposite for others. It is here that we can point to the complicity of the mainstream critic vis-à-vis the machine of ideology.